A good nutshell description of the type of Bayesianism that many LWers think correct is objective Bayesianism with critical rationalism-like underpinnings. Where recursive justification hits bottom is particularly relevant. On my cursory skim, Albert only seems to be addressing "subjective" Bayesianism which allows for any choice of prior.
It seems to think the problem of the priors does in Bayesianism :-(
Popper seems outdated. Rejecting induction completely is not very realistic.
You have to actually read Popper's books to understand what he means. You are taking short summaries of conclusions without understanding Popper's arguments behind them.
For example, when Popper says "theory" there he does not mean any theory. He means a universal theory. This is the kind of thing one finds out by reading him.
Popper gave an argument in LScD along these lines:
Consider a theory, T, that all swans are white. T is a universal theory.
No confirming evidence can prove T is true. You can see 5 white swans or 500 or 50 million. Still might be false.
But if you see one black swan it is false.
This is an asymmetry between confirmation and falsification when applied to universal theories. It does not hold for all theories.
Consider the negation ~T. At least one swan is not white. This theory cannot be refuted by any amount of observations. But it can be confirmed with only one observation. ~T is a non-universal theory and not the kind science is after.
Is he wrong? This is pure logic. Popper in LScD was interest in scientific laws -- that is, universal theories -- and in that context he was unobjectionably correct about confirmation and falsification.
What you are doing is taking short quotes and imagining the context isn't relevant, and that they only have one possible meaning. That is an unscholarly beginner's mistake.
I've simplified various things here (for example Popper's approach is not falsificationism; saying it is is a myth; linking to a page titled Falsifiability and calling it a refutation of Popper demonstrates your ignorance; and I ignored the duhem-quine problem which Popper did address from the start). And Popper had more and better arguments later. But you get the idea?
What if someone painted the swan black, or you went temporarily insane, or it was actually a black goose?
Sure, it was probably a black swan. But you can only ever be 99.99(lots of nines)9% positive it was a black swan. In this way, falsification is itself probabilistic. This becomes more important when we move on to more metaphorical swans that are all slightly different shades of grey.
I have just rediscovered an article by Max Albert on my hard drive which I never got around to reading that might interest others on Less Wrong. You can find the article here. It is an argument against Bayesianism and for Critical Rationalism (of Karl Popper fame).
Abstract:
Any thoughts?